Table of contents

CHAPTER XVII

Pall Mall

The street now known as Pall Mall was laid
out in its present position in 1661, on the
site of the old pall mall alley (see page 24).
It replaced the ancient highway which until then
had led from Charing Cross to St. James's Palace
along a line roughly parallel with, but south of,
the present street (fig. 58). The present Warwick
House Street formed the eastern extremity of this
ancient highway which, to the west of the palace,
continued along what is now Cleveland Row and
thence across the fields which are now Green
Park to Hyde Park Corner. Its course is shown on
Faithorne and Newcourt's map, published in 1658
(Plate 1).

No evidence has been recorded to suggest that
this highway was a Roman road but, as the westward continuation of the Strand, it was probably
in existence in Saxon times. (fn. 3) References to the
highway occur in documentary sources from the
twelfth century onwards, (fn. 4) chiefly in connexion
with St. James's Hospital which lay on its south
side. When Henry VIII laid out St. James's Park
a boundary wall was erected along the south side
of the highway (Plate 1) and this later served to
define the boundary of St. James's parish. (fn. 5) Between the wall of the park and the road there was
apparently a strip of waste land, for in 1620 the
High Sheriff of Middlesex was ordered to remove
'divers base sheddes and tentes sett up under St.
James Park wall betweene Charinge Chrosse and
St. James House, . . . whiche are all offensive and
noe way fitt to be suffered to stand'. (fn. 6) A few
months later the vestry of St. Martin's parish gave
instructions to the churchwardens 'to Levell the
ground adioyning to St. James wall where the
Tents were pulled downe and as soone as conveniently may be make a new paire of Butts in
the place where the ancient Butts did stande'. (fn. 7)
Shortly after the Restoration a new pall mall alley
was laid out within St. James's Park on the south
side of the park wall, but the dust from the coaches
travelling along the old highway blew over the
wall and proved Very troublsom to the players at
Mall'. (fn. 8) In July 1661 posts and rails were therefore set up 'to barre up the old way', (fn. 9) and by September a new road on the site of the old pall mall
alley (from which it took its name) had been railed
in and opened to public use.

During the development of Pall Mall Field in
the 1650's a row of houses (C on fig. 58) had been
built along the southern fringe of the field bordering the north side of the old highway. As a result
of the opening of Pall Mall these houses lay on the
south side of the new road, and in a petition
addressed to the King in 1664 the tenants stated
that their houses had been 'built applicable to it
[the old road] and cannot be turned without great
damage and charge'; they went on to request that
a grant of the site of the old road might be confirmed to them 'to augment their gardens'. (fn. 10) This
request was successful, for in April 1665 the Earl
of St. Albans's trustees received a sixty-year lease
of the greater part of the site of the old highway in
order that they might grant sub-leases to the
tenants. (fn. 11)

Figure 58:

The old highway from Charing Cross to St. James's Palace, stopped up in 1661,
and the old pall mall alley (now Pall Mall). Not to scale
A. Physic Garden. B. Tennis court, c. Houses on the north side of the old highway

Other parts of the old highway were granted to
Sir Philip Warwick (later the site of Warwick
House, Warwick House Street, see page 427), and
Sir John Denham (later incorporated into the
grounds of Marlborough House); that part between St. James's Palace and the tennis court was
built over (see below), and another part was
given to the Duchess of Cleveland and became the
site of Nos. 8–12 Cleveland Row and Stornoway
House (see pages 504–5).

The western section of the old highway was
probably closed in 1668 when the fields through
which it led were enclosed to form what is now
Green Park. Ogilby and Morgan's map of
1681–2 (Plate 2) shows the road terminating
abruptly at the edge of the park.

In 1662 Pall Mall was included among several
streets 'thought fitt immediately to be repaired new
paved or otherwise amended', and was placed
under the control of paving commissioners
appointed by an Act of Parliament. (fn. 12) The commissioners, one of whom was the Earl of St.
Albans, (fn. 13) were empowered to remove encroachments and to offer compensation for the removal
of any buildings which had stood for thirty years
or more. (fn. 12) Two such buildings were the old
tennis court and the house attached to it (see page
25), which must have almost blocked the west
end of the new street (B on fig. 58), and in 1664
the commissioners notified Martha Barker, the
then owner of the Crown lease, that they 'thought
fitt to have it [the tennis court] taken down to enlarge the said way'. She was offered £230 as compensation but was unwilling to accept, and her
under-tenant, Robert Havercampe, claimed that
satisfaction should be offered to him, as he had
already lost custom to the value of a hundred
pounds through rumours of the impending
demolition of the court. (fn. 13) The tennis court was
eventually cleared away in or before 1679, thus
opening up the west end of Pall Mall. (fn. 14)

About 1680 several houses and shops were built
on part of the ground originally let with the tennis
court and on part of the disused highway which
separated it from the front of St. James's Palace. (fn. 15) These buildings, one of which became
Ozinda's chocolate house, were erected in line
with the frontage of the other houses on the
south side of Pall Mall. They are shown on
Rocque's map (Plate 5) immediately to the
north of St. James's Palace and on the west
side of the passage marked 'Fryery'. They were
demolished in 1748 (fn. 16) and the site laid into the
roadway in front of the palace. (fn. 17) Subsequently
the frontage of the palace at this point was extended forward; the old frontage line is marked by
the boundary plates of the parishes of St. Martin
and St. James on the east wall of the palace.

Between 1814 and 1818 the narrow eastern
extremity of Pall Mall was widened in connexion
with the improvement of the Opera House; a row
of houses on the north side between Market Lane
(now occupied by the Royal Opera Arcade) and
the Haymarket was demolished. (fn. 18)

In 1928 the gateway to Marlborough House
was set back to its present position (see page 383);
it had previously stood in line with the fronts
of the adjoining houses on the south side of the
street.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century Pall
Mall was 'the ordinary Residence of all Strangers,
because of its Vicinity to the Queen's Palace, the
Park, the Parliament-House, the Theatres, and
the Chocolate and Coffee Houses, where the best
Company frequents'. (fn. 19) In 1720 John Strype
described it as 'a fine long Street. . . . The Houses
on the South side have a Pleasant Prospect into the
King's Garden; and besides, they have small Gardens behind them, which reach to the Wall [of
St. James's Park] and to many of them there are
raised Mounts, which give them the Prospect of
the said Garden, and of the Park.' (fn. 20) By 1764,
however, the beauty of the street was said to be
'greatly disfigured by several mean houses of the
lowest mechanicks being interspersed in it in many
places, and many of them joining to the most
sumptuous edifices'. (fn. 21) This contrast persisted
into the early nineteenth century, when Charles
Oilier described Pall Mall as a 'stately aristocraticlooking street' with 'private mansions fit for the
residence of the wealthy and noble' but at its east
end 'bordered with filthy alleys, inhabited by
abandoned characters'. (fn. 22)

With the abolition of St. James's Market and
the formation of Regent Street the architectural
contrast in modern Pall Mall is no longer between
the east and west ends of the street, but between
the north and south sides. In general the buildings
on the south side, with their prospect towards
Carlton Gardens and St. James's Park, have
always been on a grander scale than those on the
north, but the difference is also partly attributable
to the ownership of the land on the two sides of the
street. With the one exception of the site of
No. 79 Pall Mall, (fn. 1) the freehold of all the ground
on the south side belongs to the Crown, and ever
since the tightening up of the administration of the
Crown lands by John Fordyce in the last decade
of the eighteenth century, the granting of leases
and the design and maintenance of buildings has
been closely supervised by successive bodies of
commissioners acting on behalf of the Crown.
But on the north side of the street the freehold of
all the ground between St. James's Street and the
east side of St. James's Square was granted by the
Crown to the Earl of St. Albans's trustees in 1665
(see fig. 3) and subsequently passed to a number
of private individual owners, (fn. 1) The result has been
that in general the buildings have narrow frontages and are of inferior design to those on the
south side. To the east of the east side of St.
James's Square the freehold of this ground on the
north side of the street still belongs to the Crown;
a number of the buildings here form the return
fronts of those in Waterloo Place, and their design
has been dictated by the need for harmony with
that street.

A list of distinguished residents and lodgers in
Pall Mall whose names are not mentioned in
connexion with individual buildings in Chapters
XVIII to XXI is contained in the Appendix.

Footnotes

1. The freehold of this house was granted by Charles II to Nell Gwynne's trustees in 1676–7.

2. The freehold of two adjoining plots in this part of the street has been re-acquired by the Crown in recent years.